We don’t live in happy times, and that’s starting to show. With the exception of Art404’s video game show opening Wednesday at the AC Institute and Todd Bienvenu’s likely-hilarious beach paintings opening at yours mine & ours, there’s not a lot of lighthearted fun in the art world this week. Hell, even Art404’s show features a virtual reality space where the viewer is suffocated by news.

The doom-and-gloom kicks off with Bortolami Gallery’s University of Disasters Tuesday night, though Equity Gallery is opening Not the End on Friday, another show about anxiety with a somewhat more optimistic name. Sunday, the Queens Museum will be opening Italian artist Marinella Senatore’s solo show, which deals with protest and social space. Obviously, we all have the dire political situation on our minds.

IKEA will phase out metal fasteners and allen wrenches, instead shifting to snap-together wood joining. Reading the comments on this blog post about the new system, you would think art schools had just announced they would no longer teach figurative painting. Why are people upset about this? [Dezeen]

Police arrested Brandon Aebersold yesterday, who has been wanted since last week for his assault on a museum security guard. Aebersold told a guard at the Met that a painting was crooked. When the guard directed Aebersold a different department, he launched into a rage and smashed a bottle over his head. [DNA Info]

Applications for +Art’s Engaging Artists Fellowship are due next month. [+Art]

Axel Vervoordt Gallery is getting its own island in Antwerp. The gallery’s parent company is developing it into a “city within a city”, complete with showrooms, housing, offices for their associated foundation, a grocery store, and even medical facilities. This is weird. [The Art Newspaper]

Trump is registering dozens of trademarks in China, which will theoretically grant him exclusive use of the Trump name in promoting “escort services,” among other business ventures. [Reuters]

Stop by Pioneer Works, and you could appear in E.S.P. TV’s “Work,” a reality TV show the art collective is filming. [Forbes]

Transit planners are concerned that the MTA is unprepared for the impending L train shutdown. The MTA expects most would-be L train riders to switch to the G or JMZ (a problem in its own right) but a bus rapid transit alternative might be needed. The shutdown is expected to totally overwhelm bus lines, turning commutes into a nightmare. [Curbed]

Dana Goodyear looks back at the legacy of the late artist Jason Rhoades, whose practice seemed to foreshadow the contemporary American crisis. Rhoades sought to combine elements from the Middle East, Middle America, and Mexico into “clusterfuck” trash aesthetics. And the word “pussy” (and all its synonyms) frequently featured in his work. The irony of how prescient Rhoades interests seem: none of this work could ever be made by a white dude today without being crucified. [The New Yorker]

Welcome to the new normal. We at AFC have noticed a decline in artistic output from Brooklyn’s DIY scene as of late, while commercial galleries and institutions in Manhattan (and a few in Queens) have been gearing-up for battle mode with politically-charged programming. We’re hoping this is because everyone in Brooklyn is too busy thinking about resistance, and not because they’ve fled the country.

Tuesday night, The New School is hosting a talk about female bodies online, and Wednesday, the New Museum is opening a massive Raymond Pettibon show. After checking it out, head down the block to ICP, where curators will be discussing the loaded Perpetual Revolution: The Image and Social Change. More talks will come Thursday, such as the Brooklyn Museum’s call to defend immigrants and the Flux Factory/ABC No Rio potluck/opening/discussion about artists’ mutual aid in times like these. Friday night, take a break from political angst to get lost in the dreamy paintings of Jordan Kasey at Nicelle Beauchene, or the likely dreamier office set E.S.P. TV has staged at Pioneer Works. The weekend brings more great art and opportunities for creative resistance: be sure to check out the Queens Museum’s event to build climate change resistance coalitions between artists and activists.

There are all kinds of screenings and events to see this week, from Dirty Dancing at the Queens Museum, to Brian Alfred’s flattened renderings of Japanese train stations and Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, to Rob McLeish’s sculpture show and potential skewering of criticism at Kansas. We’re looking forward to all of this, but we’re perhaps most anticipating painter Jordan Kasey’s new show at Signal. We can’t think of a more unsettling figurative set of works and we mean that in a good way. There’s a quite dread behind that fruit loops stare above. More of that please.

At the end of January, artist/critic/curator Alex Ebstein opened Phoebe, a new gallery in Baltimore that focuses on work by female-identified artists. I chatted with Alex about the importance of spaces for women artists, the challenges and rewards of being a gallerist in Baltimore, and Virginia Poundstone’s upcoming solo exhibition, which opens at the Phoebe this Saturday.